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Is Snyder’s Superman in Trouble? – Movies News at IGN

The reboot’s allegedly plagued by script problems; Ritchie to Xerxes?

Zack Snyder will reportedly not direct the 300 Sequel (a.k.a. Xerxes) after all due to his commitment to another Warner Bros. comic book property, the Superman reboot.

Instead, Vulture claims that the studio has offered the director’s chair on the Spartan sequel to their Sherlock Holmes helmer, Guy Ritchie. So why is the studio said to be forcing Snyder to step aside from the 300 follow-up?

As Vulture explains: “One theory is that Warner Bros. needs Snyder to bear down on Superman stat: Insiders say the closely-guarded script for Superman [written by David Goyer, from a story by Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan] suffers from major third-act problems, and the studio faces a ticking clock on that franchise, legally speaking; if a Superman film isn’t in production by 2013, Warner Bros. loses the rights to the entire Superman franchise and would have to re-license it from its original creators — the estates of Detective Comics writers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — at great if not prohibitive expense.”

The site also offers another, even more problematic theory: “At a recent Warner Bros.—conducted audience research screening of Snyder’s Sucker Punch, the film tested poorly. Says one insider familiar with it, ‘It was bad; like, really bad. They’re [Warners brass] really not happy with it over there.'”

Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas and Deborah Snyder are producing the Superman reboot, which is targeted for release in December 2012. Henry Cavill was recently announced as playing the Man of Steel.